


After After the Bridge

by NonniePlume



Category: The Infernal Devices Series - Cassandra Clare, The Shadowhunter Chronicles - Cassandra Clare
Genre: Clockwork Princess spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-20
Updated: 2017-11-20
Packaged: 2019-02-04 16:54:33
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,954
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12775347
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/NonniePlume/pseuds/NonniePlume
Summary: Tessa and Jem attempt to contact Will (takes place in the modern day, after the events of Clockwork Princess’ Epilogue).





	After After the Bridge

Jem sat so still that Tessa looked twice to reassure herself he was still breathing. He was indeed still breathing and when Tessa saw what Jem held in his hand, she understood the reason for his stillness. It was his knife—the old one, with Will's blood on it—a symbol of their broken parabatai bond, a memory of what Jem had lost when he became a Silent brother and who they had both lost when Will died. 

Without saying a word, Tessa knelt beside Jem, put her arms around him, and lay her head against his shoulder. Jem had let tears roll freely down his face and one now dripped from his delicate jaw onto his collar bone. Tessa gently wiped it away. 

Tessa still missed Will, still thought of him every day, still caught herself smiling fondly at a memory of some small thing Will had said decades ago--but it was even harder, so much harder, for Jem. Jem had not been able to feel emotions for so long--he had been a Silent Brother during and for decades after Will's death. Now, finally freed of his vows, the memories rushed back at Jem, accompanied with blinding grief, fresh and raw. It was as if Jem was experiencing true loss over Will for the first time. 

"Tess," Jem whispered, breaking Tessa's musing. "I want to ask something of you, but I am afraid that it might be a horrible thing to ask."

"You never need to fear asking me for anything, Jem," said Tessa. "You must know that."

Jem took a deep breath. "You might not say that after you hear this request," he said, with a rueful but determined sort of expression. "I am selfish enough to ask anyway. Tessa, what would happen if you shape-changed into Will?"

Tessa drew in a sharp breath. "Our Will?" she whispered, though of course she had no doubt as to which Will. Who had they both just been crying for? There was no other Will for she and Jem. 

Tessa had thought of it before, had wanted desperately to do it in those first few terrible days after Will's death, anything to feel close to Will again. She had even tried to do it, though only half-heartedly (she had been far too grief-stricken at the time to properly focus on the change). Later, when she'd been able to think properly, Tessa had been too terrified to try. 

"That time the Clockwork Prince made you shape-change into his father," Jem was saying, and Tessa remembered that terrible day, all those years ago--the day she and Will thought they had lost Jem forever. "He took over your body, didn't he? You were actually channeling the real man, his spirit. Were you not?"

"I was," Tessa said. "It was one of the most terrifying experiences of my life, Jem. I'm not sure I would want to experience it again, even if it was Will. And what's more, I'm not even sure I could do it. The Clockwork Prince's father was a powerful warlock who understood magic far better than I understood it myself. He was the one who knew what he was doing, not I."

"I know," Jem said, "but I researched shape-changing quite a bit when I was a Silent Brother. I think I could help you. Will you try it, Tessa? Please?"

Tessa swallowed. Of course she wanted to connect with Will's presence again. For many years, there had been nothing she had wanted more. But what right did they, did anyone, have, to bring another's consciousness back from the dead, even if it was the consciousness of a beloved parabatai and deceased husband? Worse, what if Tessa found that she could not bring back any of Will's consciousness at all? What if an attempt would only prove to them both that there was no life after death, that Will was--really and truly--gone forever?

Tessa could not bring herself to voice any of her fears to Jem now. Jem was smart enough to have thought of all these worries on his own--thought of them, and discarded them. Tessa could see it in Jem's face: Jem was absolutely determined and so hopeful. Tessa could never deny anything from Jem, especially not when she knew that it had taken so much for him to even ask it of her. 

"I will try," she said. "Tell me what I need to do."

Jem's face lit up with wonder and hope. "Take this," Jem said, giving Tessa the knife. "Use this dagger as your gateway to Will."

Tessa nodded and started to take the knife.

"Wait--" Jem said. 

Tessa paused and looked at him questioningly. 

"Aren't you forgetting," Jem said, "if it works, you'll turn into Will. Maybe you might want to change out of these clothes?"

"Oh," Tessa said, a light laugh in her voice, as she looked down at her skinny jeans. "I would hate for my favorite jeans to rip when I come into Will's form."

Tessa stripped out of her jeans, undies and bra and stood in only an oversized white T shirt. Only then did she hold her hands out for Jem's dagger. 

Jem hesitated only a fraction of a moment, then gave the dagger to Tessa. She clasped it in both hands and held it close to her heart, taking a deep breath in and thinking of Will, Will in all his fullness of life, as she searched for the spark of him that still seemed to cling to this dagger. 

Will, she whispered in her mind into the void beyond. In her own body, she was vaguely aware of Jem moving close to her, stroking her shoulder gently and and bringing the backs of her hands (still closed around the dagger) against Jem's own chest—no, not his chest, his collarbone—the place where his faded parabatai rune was still visible. 

With a flash so fast and brilliant Tessa felt she might explode, a change came over Tessa, and she felt she could scarcely hold on to her own soul as the soul of another being so fierce and bright and full of life filled her own body and grew her into Will's form. She opened her eyes--only it was not really her opening them--she was merely a spectator in her body as another's consciousness directed it--opening Will's eyes. Will's hands gripped a dagger, and another man's hands--Jem's--held them fast to his faded parabatai mark. 

"Jem?" Will's voice sounded old and odd, and Tessa realized, with a small shock, that she had turned into Will as an 80-something-year-old man--though, this Will, while elderly, was still strong and healthy--not frail and bedridden as he had been on that day he had died. 

Jem was crying. "It's you," he said. "It's really really you."

"It's you," Will said, with equal wonder. "Jem. You are healed. You are no longer a Silent Brother."

"I am healed," Jem smiled and laughed through his tears. "I am here, with Tessa. You are Tessa. You are borrowing her body at the moment."

"By the Angel," Will said. "Tess!" He hugged himself and Tessa rejoiced within herself at Will's embrace, though she did not know if Will was even really aware that her own consciousness still shared her body. 

"James," Will said to Jem, "tell me how this came to be."

"It does not matter," Jem said, "except, perhaps, that I should tell you that it was one of your descendants who unknowingly found the cure. A great-great-great-grandson of yours and Tessa's."

At this, Tessa felt tears spring to Will's eyes. "Jem," Will said, suddenly lurching forward to embrace his former parabatai. "And you and Tessa," Will asked, his voice muffled with his jaw pressed tightly against Jen's shoulder. "You are happy?"

Jem nodded, only the tiniest bit of awkwardness showing in the slight stiffening of of his frame under Will's embrace. It was a strange business, Tessa thought, this love shared between the three of them, Will and Tessa, and Tessa and Jem, and Will and Jem. But Jem need not have worried. 

"Be happy," Will said, with all the genuine goodwill of his heart that Tessa had always known he would give, had they ever asked it of him. 

"Are you happy?" asked Jem. 

A strange sort of pause seemed to come over Will. "I am not alive," Will said, with a slight note of wonder in his voice, and Tessa, inside the same body as Will, noticed that Will did not feel any emotion--no fear, no remorse, no jealousy, no--anything, as he said it. Merely a calm sort of contentment and a statement of fact. I am not alive. 

"I am glad to know you are cured, my parabatai," Will said. "I am glad to know you and Tess live, and are well, and are happy. But Tess must come back to herself now. Leave me at peace, Jem. Be happy, both of you," again, he embraced Jem and hugged himself with a fond thought towards Tessa. "Know that I have always loved you both. I want you to be happy."

He looked at Jem, and smiled, and with no further warning, Tessa felt herself coming back into her own form.

"Will," she cried, wishing there were some way for her to hold him to herself, but her voice was already her own, and she choked back a sob, as she opened her eyes in her own body, to find Jem catching her into his arms and holding her close. 

"He's gone," Jem said, wiping the tears from her face and kissing her softly. "Thank you, Tessa. Thank you. That was the most beautiful gift, the most amazing, most wonderful miracle, the biggest boon I could ever ask of you." He let out a shuddering sigh. "He's gone, Tessa, but he was here. I spoke to him. He spoke to you. Did you hear? He wants us to be happy."

"I heard," Tessa said, wiping tears from her eyes, unsure whether they were tears that she, or Will, had shed. "He has always loved us both." She sniffed loudly, and collapsed in Jem's arms, sobbing so hard, she couldn't keep standing, not knowing whether she was crying for her joy at seeing Will or her grief at losing him again. 

Jem brushed her hair back from her forehead. He was crying too, but he was also smiling. His hopeful expression gave her strength. They had talked to Will. He had wished them well. Was that not a miracle?

“Jem,” Tessa said, rising solemnly and wiping the tears from her face. She still held Jem’s hands, but she pushed him gently back to the ground when he tried to rise with her. They stood facing each other now, Jem on one knee, Tessa standing. “You asked me once to marry you,” Tessa said, and put her finger over his lips in a hushing gesture when he tried to speak. “I said yes, all those years ago. My answer has never changed. But it has been a long time. It's my turn to ask now. Will you marry me? Now, in this age and time?”

Jem beamed, rising to embrace her, all his tears gone. “You know I will, Tessa.”

The last taste of tears faded from Tessa’s mouth as Jem rose and kissed her fiercely. They would miss Will; they would always miss him--but at least they had each other. They would remember Will together, and go on living their lives together, and they would be happy—Tessa did not doubt that they would be happy, and Tessa was grateful for that.


End file.
